Sweet Charade
by tapioca two-step
Summary: Somewhere in the midst of her crazed ranting is a memory waiting to be revisited. The last moments of the Yeerk juggernaut known as Visser One.


I felt that Visser One's death was a little...flat. Getting stepped on is so anticlimactic for such a dynamic character. Enjoy.

Sweet Charade

I am starving to death.

The pain of Kandrona starvation is unimaginable, and coupled with the physical abuse my human host body has endured, is more than enough to drive any sentient creature insane.

I am past my breaking point. If Eva is laughing at me, I can't hear her over the sound of my own terrible screams. The sounds are being ripped almost involuntarily from my—from Eva's—throat by the burning, empty, torturous stabs of starvation lancing through my consciousness.

It hurts. It hurts so much. There is nothing left of my body but pain. I can't think. I can barely remember who I am or what I did to deserve such anguish.

[You're finished, Visser One!] Eva's triumphant voice, momentarily cutting through the fog of agony clouding my senses. [You're going to die and I'm going to be free of you. I've dreamt of this moment. I've held it in my heart—]

"_Our heart_! Yours and mine and all together; you will never be rid of me!" I don't understand the words that are spilling from my bleeding lips. I'm raging so violently against the ropes to which I'm secured that my hands and wrists and waist are chafed and bleeding. I can't help it. They're keeping me pinioned to the metal stake in the platform, so close—so close!—to the Kandrona pool that I can practically feel it soaking into my body.

But it's not. And that makes my pain even worse.

"I created this! Call me traitor, will you, when I am the reason you are here?" I throw my head back and scream, a long, shrill note, which nearly causes me to choke. "Kill it! Kill it kill it kill it kill it!"

I'm talking about myself, now. In my own mind, I'm merely a creature that needs to be destroyed. No longer Edriss Five-Six-Two. No longer Visser One, the champion of the Yeerk infestation of Earth—until that absolute fool Visser Three took over my position. His petty jealousy of me caused my destruction.

[You deserved it,] says Eva smugly. I don't even have the strength to quiet her.

My chin drops to my chest. I can see my body shaking visibly now, the blood shivering down my arms and thighs. Small noises wheeze in and out of my mouth. "Aaaaah. Aaaaah. Aaaaah."

Another pang of starvation. I flail and jerk against the chains and ropes that wrap inexorably around me. "We were the first, Essam and I!" I wail, repeating words I had already spoken. "The first, damn you, and we died for it! We died every day! Humans! _Humans!"_

[Mom!]

An all-too familiar voice calls out to me in thought speak. Blinking through the blood on my eyelids, I scan the crowd of Controllers jeering at me, come to watch the spectacle of Visser One's execution. I know this voice. Eva does too.

[Marco!] she cries out desperately. Her reaction is enough to silence me and she actually manages to turn my eyes—her eyes, _our _eyes—in another direction, searching for her son. My starving wrath reaches a new peak. I slam down on her senses and begin beating the back of my head against the pole I'm pinioned to.

"Mother, mother, mother!" There is salt water in my eyes. "I was a mother—we were mothers, weren't we, Allison? Allison and Hildy, sitting in a tree, and Essam and I were in love! Yeerks in love—didn't you know, Visser Three?!" I don't even know if he can understand what I'm saying. I don't even know where he _is. _"We swore that they would live because we're good parents! We're good _humans!_"

Darwin. Madra. Through the fatal veil that I'm shrouded in, I remember their names. I will always remember their names. My children.

I could have loved them—

[How long are you going to take to die, Yeerk scum?!] Eva is as impatient as the rest of the Controllers at the poolside.

"Raw eggs and lettuce," I wheeze to Visser Three, "and you still don't know. You don't know and I can't wait until you find out that your Andalite bandits are_—aaaaauuuugh_!"

Eva makes me bite my—her—our—tongue. I'm losing control of her. I'm too far gone.

It's close. As close at the nourishing, blessed Kandrona that's mere inches away from my fingertips.

Death will come first.

Explosions nearby, although to my ears they sound very far away. The only reason I know that something is happening in the direct area of the pool is because of the burning shrapnel that falls in pieces all around me, into the Yeerk pool, onto my legs.

[Marco's coming to save me!] Eva is practically squealing in her joy. The pain of my death must be doubly agonizing for her broken body, and yet she is happy. I hate her.

[Human,] I say raggedly, [you shall always be my slave. I will haunt you in your dreams.]

[The only nightmares I will be having will be from knowing that an abomination like you actually has progeny walking on this Earth.]

Footsteps on the platform. I fix my eyes on the sludgy pool next to me.

Progeny, indeed.

_Don't hurt them, Edriss! _

"I didn't hurt them, Essam!" I cry out, writhing in my personal prison. "_Aaaauuugh! _I didn't hurt them, but I lost them! I loved and lost! _Essam!_" Jerking back and forth against the stake, I rail against my personal mental hell, at the pain of death that is reaching its climax. How did it come to this?

"_We signed our own death decrees_," I had said. So long ago. And yet no time at all. Everything that I have done up until now is lost to me. I am a traitor and I am dying for it.

Hands on my body. I am still screaming, but the words are lost to me now. They're just noises, the noises of an animal in agony, wishing for death.

The ropes and chains lose their tautness. Someone's face in my dim vision. No—some_thing_'s face.

I'm staring into the liquid black eyes of a huge gorilla.

[Mom, it's me. It's Marco.]

It takes me a second to get my breath back. And then I surge forwards, trying to escape his grasp, batting his hairy hands away. "Lettuce and eggs, Visser Three! Don't you see, you imbecile?! You and your kind will fail! Sick and twisted and starving! Sick and twisted and dying! Parasites! _Parasites!!"_

[Mom, hold on! We're going to jump.]

"We were the first and I loved them! We were the first Yeerks to become truly _human!!"_

I am still shouting nonsense, but freedom from the chains has given me a second wind. If I can just escape from Eva's head, I can make my way out of her ear and land in the Yeerk pool. Safe. I will be weak but I will not die. Kandrona to spare. I will swim around amongst my brothers and sisters and never stop basking in those glorious rays.

I begin voluntarily withdrawing my control from Eva's senses.

[Edriss, what are you doing?]

"I've gone human. I've gone human. I've gone human." A mantra that's vibrating in my body as keenly as the starvation pains. I feel myself being picked up again by Eva's son. I bite back a scream as his fingers scrape against bare bone.

I'm still holding on to Eva's speech centers. I am literally shaking with the effort to pace myself. This will be the last shred of control that I will hold over her. She can't be allowed to tell Marco of my plan.

[You're going to die, Edriss! You can't cheat death this time! Where do you think you'll find freedom? You'll just have to go through this all over again when Visser Three catches you!]

[Visser Three cannot do any more harm to me, Eva.] I'm struggling to speak. _He made my son a Controller and most likely has Madra in his grasp, too. Luckily for me, the Visser is completely inept. My children may live. _I think of one last thing to say to Eva before I make my move. [Earth may yet survive, if humans like your son are fighting for it.]

I don't bother with a farewell. I merely begin sliding out of the ear canal. I feel a physical jerk as Marco picks Eva's body up and launches himself over the Yeerk pool. As fast as I can I push myself out of Eva's host body and plummet towards the ground, blind and deaf and dumb once more but about to feel the sweet rays of Kandrona wash over my body like balm on an open—

—I hit solid ground.

Vibrations all around me. The air is alive with screaming and brawling and bodies and blood hitting the floor. My body feels as dry as clay, seized with indescribable pain that's now laced with disappointment and terror and impotent resentment. I missed the pool. I don't know how far away I am from the edge of the platform we've landed on but it's most likely too far of a distance for my starvation wracked-body to make.

The will to live goes out of me like a sigh. I feel myself moving. Base instinct. All is dark around me. I can't hear or see or speak.

But in my blindness, I see.

Essam. Essam looking at me through Hildy's eyes. My two glowing, beautiful newborns. Madra and her huge black eyes staring trustingly up at me. Darwin nuzzling my—Allison's—breast, and me with the biggest heart in the world.

Yeerks can't love, and yet I did.

I look up at Essam. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still hear the rumblings of war going on around me—someone has me in their hands—someone is squeezing me. I am being crushed, and the pain of starvation lessens a little.

"Essam, I can't breathe," I say.

"I love you, Edriss." He answers. His eyes crinkle with his smile and I immediately begin to cry.

What a wonderful final memory. It almost makes me ignore the huge mass that is bearing down on my tiny, gray, starving body.

Instead I choose to focus on the faces of whom I learned to adore in my time as a human.

Then my perspective shifts and I see us, Essam and I and the twins, as if I am floating above them. I see us for what we are. Were.

A family.

A tiny speck of love in the dark.

I—


End file.
